Rhodora! If the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
Interpretation
Beauty exists for its own sake, regardless of its purpose.
In this quote, Emerson reflects on the idea that beauty should not be justified by its usefulness or practicality. Instead, it has intrinsic value and significance, suggesting that the mere presence of beauty in the world is a valid reason for its existence, inspiring us to appreciate and celebrate the aesthetic aspects of life without needing a functional rationale.
In practice
In a discussion about art and its significance, one could quote Emerson to emphasize that beauty holds value beyond practicality.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!
What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land!
Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.
Pride is the utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness.
It's a true image, born of a false spectacle.
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